US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19

Sorry can you point out where they are doing this? because banning tiktok certainly is not doing those things.

    > there’s no access to direct ownership in some amazing companies

The new ruling makes it clear that misinformation is legal under 1A

The point is simply that U.S. democracy is visibly in tatters. Clinging on to this notion that still, in spite of all the evidence in front of our eyes, the U.S. is somehow fundamentally and essentially different to the other historical empires, is just your usual bog-standard nationalist delusion.

I think that the founding story of the States is beautiful, and that some of the early writing is really quite something (I'm thinking of Paine in particular here). And I'm very fond of some of the other cultural output. It's not "pleasant" to face the reality of the modern day U.S.A., is what I'm saying, but to hope to improve the state of the world, it has to be done.

There are many statistical datapoints which suggest the country is doing very poorly socially. Then it seems to me that a serious case can be made that the vast network of state, semi-private and private institutions over there involved in the "security" sector (arms, cyber, related fields) has gotten completely out of hand and answers effectively to itself only.

I'm trying to refrain from making specific examples here, because any mention of a specific issue will result in the assumption that some partisan point is being made. Accepting that risk, perhaps we could: look at the president; look at what the alternatives were; look at the previous presidents from the last decades; look at the legal system; look at the prison system; look at povery rates; look at crime rates; look at political prisoners; look at the increase in attacks on the media; look at military spending; look at straightforward, old-fashioned corruption; look at drone strikes; look at studies of how the state's actions tracks with polls of what the populace want; etc etc.

At a certain point, it's hard to believe in the intellectual integrity of observers who cling on to the argument: "ah, but look, that other country is worse!" This is an obvious race to the bottom, and can excuse any level of depravity. Again, it's hard to see how this belief is possible to hold without a solid dose of quasi-religious nationalist fervour.

To be more concrete about the defamation example:

Imagine someone has a grudge against you for some reason that doesn't involve any history of illegal behavior, like maybe your business won a lucrative contract that they wanted for their business. Motivated by a desire to hurt your personal reputation and cause you social ostracism, they tell all your friends and neighbors that you're a convicted murderer, when they know you've never even been accused of any kind of wrongdoing in any court whatsoever.

To the best of my knowledge, this is illegal defamation in every US state, and it's criminal in some of them. Although it's rarely prosecuted as a crime, criminal defamation laws have been upheld as constitutional in certain situations including ones that would cover this scenario (if the available evidence meets the criminal standard of proof in court). Civil defamation lawsuits are commonly enough made across the US, and under scenarios like this one, are also commonly enough won (or settled between the parties).

To be more concrete about the product liability example:

Imagine that you are a business selling a product and you write "safe for all ages" on the box, when you know it has components that are small enough for young children to choke on, but you lie about it on the packaging because your product really appeals to young children and you don't want to lose out on the profits from selling to their parents. If a 2-year-old then proceeds to choke on one of the components in the box, yes indeed there are lots of courts across the US that would award damages to the affected family, and maybe some courts that would find criminal liability as well although I'm less sure of that question.